Autonomy is not the same as general intelligence. We already have all kinds of fully autonomous technologies that are nowhere close to generally intelligent. Plus, at a certain level of abstraction, human beings also need to be “prompted” to some extent by stimuli. And this is the funny thing about general intelligence as a concept: most of the definitions that come close to internal coherence rely on references to human intelligence, a concept we feel like we understand because we all live it all the time, but whose actual nature and structure is extremely slippery.

I don't get it, human employees frequently need to ask for directions too?

They often act on their own, too, and get things wrong a lot. The reason it works is because of all the systems of laws and institutions we have built around humans, not so much because human minds are special.

It sounds like what you're saying is that AGI should have some sort of free will. I'm not sure why you would add that as a requirement. Could you expand?